The seekrit painting has left the building!

[avram]

It’s in the clutches of UPS, and heading out into the world. In fact, according to UPS’s tracking software, it’s, um, TRACKING NUMBER NOT FOUND IN UPS DATABASE. PLEASE TRY LATER. Well, that’s not very reassuring. (And I don’t think I’m fooling anyone with this “seekrit painting” crap. Well, at least not the person who needs to be fooled.)

I handed it off at UPS’s Broad Street center, down near the tippy-toe of Manhattan, right near the display there where you can see the foundations of the tavern that served as a provisional city hall back in colonial days. Then I wandered up Stone Street, enjoying the cobblestone street and old architecture, and on up to the north and west, eventually winding up at Ground Zero for the first time in daylight. And for the first time I got that tongue-probing-a-missing-tooth feeling about the World Trade Center towers, standing on the corner of Church and Cedar, exactly where I had once stopped to pick up a soda on my way to Greg Costikyan’s place for some gaming a few years back. It’s mostly just a tourist site now, with people crowding up against the fence, smiling and having their pictures taken. I think I need to find out whether anyone’s written a suitably maudlin memorial song that a can convince people to gather and sing on the anniversary. (Hm. 11 Sep 2002 will be a Wednesday.)

I strolled up to J&R’s, lusted over an iPod for a while, left, bought some Italian ices — not the commercial cup kind, but the old-fashioned kind where the guy actually shaves ice off a big block and squirts syrup into it. That’s the first time I’ve had it, and, well, it wasn’t actually that good; I’d have been better off with a lemon Frozfruit. Oh well.

I caught the 6 train at Canal and got off at 33rd, to drop in at the Compleat Strategist, NYC’s premier game store. Not only were there a bunch of people already there who I know, but it turned out they’d been talking about me just before I walked in. I was invoked! Now I own their souls!

Matt and I headed over to Jim Hanley’s comic shop, where we once again ran into the same folks we’d been talking to at the Strat. Matt took off after a while, and I bought the first three issues of Xeno’s Arrow (a science fiction series that looks like it might be interesting) and the first issue of Ultimate X-Men, Collected Edition (collecting issues #1-3 of the series). Ultimate X-Men is (I think) a retelling of the X-Men oriented towards the new reader, without a whole big wad of earlier continuity to wade through. It’s pretty good if you don’t mind seeing old beloved characters put into slightly new roles. It is a bit odd reading both this and New X-Men, and having the same set of characters living in two different continuities, but if Gundam fans can hack it I can, and the writing’s pretty good and I like the art a lot.

Ah, I just tried the UPS tracking again, and it tells me the package is In Transit, at the Manhattan South facility as of 15 minutes ago.

Comments

[almeda.livejournal.com]

The real problem is that Ultimate X-Men sucks huge rocks, because it twists the characters around to things they're not s'posed to be.

This is not true of all the Ultimates. I like Ultimate Spidey with a burning passion of like-ness. 'The Ultimates' (in other words, Ultimate Avengers) is very cute, and has some good ideas. Ultimate X-Men, however, sucks rocks. Wolverine is not, and is never supposed to be, a straighter arrow than Scott Summers, just to give one example. I'm not utterly against all ageshifting reimaginations of the X-canon; I like 'X-Men Evolution' decently, and the few issues of New X-Men I've bothered with look interesting, if too light on plot-per-issue for me to feel like shelling out $6 (I'm waiting for trade paperbacks).

Just one opinionated fan's opinion. Hi, by the way. We've run into each other on rasff, though not in this alias for me.

Straight arrow?

[avram]

Wolverine a straight arrow?! That must be something that happens further on than the three issues I've read. At the moment he's working for Magneto, and infiltrating the X-Men to assassinate Xavier. Which is still a major change from the original character, but one I'm willing to go with for the sake of this side-continutity.

Damn, did I love that one panel of the Sentinels hovering over Manhattan like a fleet of zeppelins.

Re: Straight arrow?

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Aha. I missed the very first few ishes; I think the first I got was 8 or so? Something like that. Definitely when they all go to Europe (on no notice, without notifying the parents of minors, and Bobby's CELLPHONE still works? What the HELL?) There's just ridiculous little holes or inconsistencies that feel like someone slapped it together instead of, y'know, really writing it.

In Europe especially, a big deal is made over how Scott the 'troubled kid' is a role model for other boys his age, not because he's a good boy or a smart boy (implied that he ISN'T), but through doing Good Works.